


Safe Places

by desertlemons



Series: Hideaways [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Erica isn't though, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Scott is a Bad Friend, Set after Season 2, Stiles Stilinski Dies, also lots of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7858948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desertlemons/pseuds/desertlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a boy with amber eyes, somewhere in that graveyard in Derek’s mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Places

At the funeral, Erica can do nothing more than stare and shake with silent anger. She looks at Scott and Allison and Jackson and Lydia, and she wants to rip their throats out, one by one.

She doesn’t think she’s ever hated someone this much, can’t comprehend the nerve of these people, who treated Stiles so horribly when he was still alive. And now Lydia, who didn’t even _like_ him, is crying more than his _father_ , and Allison, who locked them in their basement and let her grandfather _torture_ them, has the gall to stand there, gripping Scott’s hand like the contact is the only thing holding the both of them together.

Erica doesn’t even realize she made a step forward until Isaac grabs her hand tightly in his, pulling her back against his side. She looks at him in protest, but then she sees it in his eyes. He’s just as furious as she is, even if he’s better at hiding it. There’s a cold fire burning behind his usually hesitant, blue eyes, mirroring Erica’s own.

She grips his hand tightly as she looks back to where they’re lowering the coffin into the ground, and calms herself. Stiles wouldn’t have wanted her to kill people at his funeral. She has to stay put, for now.

There’ll be time for everything else later.

 ....

_She finds him in the preserve, smelling of blood and death, his body torn open._

_Some part of her knew, she thinks. Some part of her felt it happen. And now, here she is, with a dead pack member at her feet._

_The first rays of white morning light have just begun to break through the tree branches and illuminate his pale face, letting the droplets of ruby red on his cheeks stand out like black ink on paper._

_For a while, she does nothing but kneel next to his still body, staring at his face, utterly incapable of feeling anything at all._

_She almost forgot, sometimes, that he was still human after everything. To her, he always seemed like the strongest of all of them, always trying to protect them, even when they were nothing but enemies at best. Seeing him like this, it seems almost impossible to understand._

_She contemplates calling for Isaac, who can’t be all too far away, but she doesn’t remember how to use her voice at the moment. It doesn’t matter; he will find them on his own, sooner rather than later. Instead, she takes one pale hand into both of hers, slowly and impossibly gentle. (She can’t bear the thought of breaking him even further.)_

_Paper skin and glass bones, she thinks. She has to be careful._

_Together they wait, the two of them._

 ....

Derek doesn’t come, and Erica wants to be angry at him for that, but somehow she can’t bring herself to be.

The part of her that’s wolf understands the pain of losing a mate, and feels a deep, bone-shaking sympathy and the desire to howl from the injustice of it all.

The past few days have been hell for all of them, losing a pack member feels nothing short of losing a limb, but, even next to Erica’s own despair, what Derek must feel seems almost incomprehensible.

She hasn’t seen him much since they found the body, but when she did, his face always looked like something had torn his heart clean out of his chest. She’d never seen anything like it and, again, her wolf howled in sympathy for her heartbroken Alpha. 

Boyd isn’t here either. He’s looking after Derek, even though there’s not much any of them can do for him. It would have been grounding, to have the two of them at the funeral. Their Alpha would have been a calming presence. But still, she understands. At least she has Isaac, who keeps her from ripping Lydia Martins throat out.

It’s better than nothing.

 ....

_Derek often finds himself staring at Stiles, when he knows he won’t be noticed. There’s something like an unspoken promise in his eyes, of a future filled with all things good._

_He is life itself, and sometimes Derek_ can’t _look at him because of that. Because if Stiles is life and Derek brings nothing but death with him, he knows what will happen eventually, if he lets himself get too close._

_So Derek keeps his distance, and watches from afar. Loves him secretly and unconditionally and just sometimes, lets himself hope._

 ....

Some things live forever.

Things that lie buried beneath the pieces left behind by shattered dreams and broken promises, where they are slowly forgotten, but never left for good.

The things we lose always return to us, in the end. Whether we want them to, or not.

Derek knows the truth of these things by now.

Derek remembers, even when he wishes he couldn’t.

He remembers his mother’s hands and his father's eyes and the sound of laughter ringing through empty hallways on Sunday mornings. Derek remembers, and it still hurts so much because these are the things that will live forever, running through Derek’s veins like acid, even after all this time. After all this time these things still hurt so much, he feels like he might drown in them, sometimes.

But not like this. Never like this.

It’s excruciating, the pain of it all; every second worse than the last.

“ _It’s just what you do, Derek_ ,” a nearly forgotten voice in the back of his mind whispers. It sounds suspiciously like Kate. “ _You take the things you love and you tear them apart. You should have seen this coming_.”

 _I did see it coming_ , he wants to scream. Even if he didn’t, not really. After all, this is how it always ends; with a broken heart and a screaming soul and blood on Derek’s hands.

 ....

_It’s always Derek, in the end._

_Derek, who’s the last person he thinks about before he stops breathing._

_Derek, who will always be his first love, and his last._

_For just one moment, two hearts stop beating._

_(One of them forever.)_

 ....

Erica doesn’t break down (not completely, at least) until two days after the funeral, when she’s visiting Stiles’ grave for the first time.

It’s October, and the trees surrounding the graveyard are half dead, much like herself. The smell of dead things lingers around her as she sinks onto her knees and cries, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. 

She doesn’t know how long she’s there, but at some point Isaac and Boyd come looking for her. Isaac sinks down next to her and puts his arms around her shaking frame, and Boyd’s hand on her shoulder is a silent reassurance.

She feels their pain deep in her bones, almost as if it’s her own.

(In a way, it is.)

_...._

_It’s Stiles she comes to when she has a nightmare._

_Sometimes, she crawls into his bed in the middle of the night. He puts his arms around her then, without a word (circumstances made him a light sleeper, like it did with all of them). He never says anything, but she knows he’ll listen if she wants to talk. He always does._

_Some nights, it’s Stiles who wakes up, gasping and shivering, sometimes even crying._

_It’s her who holds him then, and sometimes she forgets where he ends and she begins._

_It’s just what they do, being there for each other. This is what pack is, in the end. Protecting each other from their demons._

_And some mornings, if the Sheriff’s already headed out, he’ll make them both breakfast and then drive them to school. Scott looks at them weirdly then, like he doesn’t know they’re pack. He probably doesn’t, she thinks._

_Stiles never pays him any mind._ _They don’t talk a lot these days._

....

Erica almost kills him when they find out.

They found Stiles’ phone still clutched in his hand, but it isn’t until a week or so after the funeral that Isaac thinks about looking at his recent calls. As it turns out, he called Scott fifteen times or so, and every call but one got rejected.

It’s not pretty.

She breaks as good as every bone in Scott’s body, some of them twice. She doesn’t care that he doesn’t once try to fight back, she’s too furious for that.

Afterwards, when Boyd and Isaac pull her off him and Allison’s bow is pointed at her heart, she screams at the both of them. Throws everything she hates them for at their heads, everything they did to them, and, more importantly, Stiles over the last few months.

Scott’s face is pulled into a pained grimace when her pack members drag her away, and she knows, somehow, that it’s not because of his broken bones.

Good, she thinks, let him hurt. He deserves it more than anyone. They both do.

Afterwards, in the calm after the storm, they decide to not tell Derek. He’d kill Scott for real, they know, wouldn’t be able to help himself. Not that any of them would care either way, but it’s not what Stiles would have wanted. That much is sure.

“To think that I looked up to him, once.”, Boyd says, and shakes his head. Isaac puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We all did.” He tries to sound reassuring, but he just sounds so, so tired.

Erica gets up from where she’s been sitting on the ground with her head between her knees, and looks at them for a few moments, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with cold anger. “I didn’t,” she says at last, before heading to the door.

“I looked up to Stiles.”

_...._

_There’s a boy, standing next to an open locker on the other side of the hallway, his arms flailing wildly, the strap of his backpack slipping from his shoulder every now and then because of his frantic movements. The boy he’s talking to, Erica doesn’t know him either, doesn’t even look at him, but he’s smiling slightly, obviously amused by his friend’s antics._

_Erica pays no mind to him though, she’s too captivated by the boy with the brilliant smile._

_He’s not obviously attractive or anything, not like Jackson Whittermore (who pushed her into a locker twice already today), with his buzz cut and lanky limbs, but there’s something in the way he looks so happy to be here, right in this moment, that makes Erica stop in her tracks._

_She doesn’t understand how the other boy, the one who’s still not looking at him, but rolling his eyes fondly, cannot stare at him the way she does right now. His smile has to be the most beautiful one she’s ever seen, and the happiest. He just looks so glad to be here, in this horrible, horrible place, where everyone is just so mean and superficial._

_He’s different somehow, she thinks. His smile and the glint in his eyes promise adventure and fun and everything good, and Erica knows, right away, that he’s not like the rest of them._

_She’s tempted to step closer when suddenly his head turns, like he felt her stare on his face, and catches her looking at him. For a short moment his smile dims in surprise and Erica’s breath catches in her throat, but then it returns, even wider than before and Erica feels like her whole world just got turned upside down._

_Then, before she can even think about smiling back, the bell rings and the boy gives her a little wave, completely unabashed, before he slings an arm around his friend’s shoulders and pulls him away (into the direction of their next class undoubtedly)._

_Erica stares after them for a long time, baffled. Then, for the first time since she stepped into the hell that is high school a week ago, she smiles, feeling something warm and hopeful bloom in her chest._

_Perhaps everything will turn out alright after all._

_...._

The Argents leave town shortly after that.

Erica sometimes sees Scott in school, sitting alone at lunch, looking hollow and tired like he hasn’t slept in days.

She doesn’t have it in her to gloat, but she doesn’t feel sorry for him either. She can’t.

There’s an empty space at his side, where a boy with a bright smile is supposed to chatter away excitedly. It still looks wrong, to see that space empty.

But then again, there’s the same space next to her. The only difference is that it’s more recent than the one next to him.

 ....

_It seems to be Stiles’ destiny; caring for people who will never care for him. It’s just who he is, what he does, loving too deeply and too easily._

_He tries to bury his feelings for Derek, he really does. He buries himself in research about the monster of the week (a manticore, apparently), and works on developing his powers. The progress is barely there, but it’s enough to keep him at least a little bit occupied._

_(It doesn’t change anything. Derek still runs through his veins like liquid fire.)_

 ....

 

There’s a boy with amber eyes, somewhere in that graveyard in Derek’s mind.

 

 ....

_Stiles gives him a silver keychain for his birthday. It’s a small gift, but Derek doesn’t think he’s ever been happier to receive anything in his life._

_He watches as Stiles blushes and stutters after thrusting it into his hand, and he can’t help the wide grin that spreads over his mouth. He also can’t help grabbing one of Stiles's fluttering hands in his and squeezing it reassuringly._

I love it _, (you) he says. And,_ thanks.

_And then Stiles smiles back shyly, and Derek knows he should pull back, but he doesn’t. Just this once, he doesn’t care._

_(This is where the world begins.)_

 ....

Erica manages to talk Derek into visiting the Sheriff with her. She thinks it’ll be good for him, for both of them.

It seems like Melissa McCall told him everything, but he still lets them into his house, even knowing what they are.

The Sheriff doesn’t look much different than Derek; pale and sleep-deprived and ten years older than he can possibly be.  For a while, they just sit there, and no one says anything.

“How well did you know him?”, the Sheriff asks at last, voice cracking, like the question is a shard of glass in his throat.

Erica looks up at him, and tells the truth.

“He was my best friend,” she says, and her voice is surprisingly unwavering. “I loved him.”

The Sheriff looks at her with something close to surprise in his tired, sad eyes.

“He never mentioned you.”, he says. He sounds too wary for her liking. Erica doesn’t let the comment throw her off.

“Well,” she says, tasting the bitterness of her own tight smile on her lips, “from what I understand, the two of you didn’t really talk much in the last months, did you?”

He winces at that, and she immediately feels sorry. She doesn’t say so, though. It’s still the truth, after all.

The Sheriff’s eyes fall onto the silver keychain between Derek’s fingers, who hasn’t said a single thing since they arrived, only fondling with it in his hands. It’s a wolf, he realizes, howling at the moon. He lets out a deep sigh, and his shoulders sag.

“No,” he says. “I suppose we didn’t.”

 ....

_Derek knows when he first lays eyes on him. Of course he does. How could he not?_

_It doesn’t work like one might expect it to, he doesn’t love him from that first moment on. But he knows that he will, if he lets himself get too close. It’s not uncommon for mates to stay platonic, even if it’s hard, but he knows, as he looks into those almost golden eyes, that that’s not what it will come to._

_And through all that grief, old and fresh, that tears at his heart, he still feels the connection like it’s the only thing that’s ever mattered. (Maybe it is)_

_He looks up to the stars that night, and sees everything change._

_...._

He goes back to Stiles’ house sometimes, during the worst nights. His scent still lingers in the air, making Derek’s wolf howl in despair, as it always does when something reminds them of him.

He never goes inside. He doesn’t think he could bear being surrounded by Stiles’ things. It would only make this worse, if that’s even a possibility.

Instead he sits under the window of Stiles’ room all night, like he used to when he was still alive, with his head between his knees, listening for a missing heartbeat.

 ....

_Somehow, they always end up here. With Derek pinning him against the wall with his body, snarling into his face._

_“Seriously, sourwolf,” Stiles says, squirming a little to escape the uncomfortable position Derek has him in, with his shoulder pressed against the doorframe. The only good it does him though is Derek pressing against him even harder, growling like the oversized puppy he is. “You should think about getting yourself a new set of intimidation techniques. This started to get old ages ago.”_

_“What the hell were you thinking?”, Derek snarls, instead of letting go of him. Stiles doesn’t know what he was expecting. He just rolls his eyes and stops wiggling. (He won’t get free by himself, anyway.)_

_Instead he just smirks at Derek, and says, “I was_ thinking _about saving your sorry little werewolf ass from getting eaten by a stupid_ manticore _.” Derek doesn’t seem amused by his sarcasm, and his glare makes Stiles want to squirm again. He refuses to, though. “I don’t get why you’re so pissed about this anyway. It worked pretty well if you ask me. Seriously dude, you should be thanking me.”_

 _As predicted, Derek doesn’t thank him at all, and just continues growling at him instead. Which, seriously,_ rude. _(But he doesn’t expect anything else from Derek by now, so it’s kind of okay.)_

 _“You could have_ died _.”_

_Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and again, we’ve been over that. I didn’t though, so no harm done.”_

_Derek just stares at him for a few moments and, yeah, those are definitely claws digging into his shoulder. Then he suddenly lets him go like he’s been burned, and Stiles almost falls over in surprise._

_“You know what?” Derek says, voice flat and eyes directed to the floor. “Do what you want. I don’t care.”_

_Then he’s gone, and Stiles is left behind to stare at the space where he just stood a second ago._

_“Yeah,” he says into the sudden silence, barely audible at all. “I know you don’t.”_

_(It’s the last time they see each other. A week later, Stiles is bleeding out in the woods, and wonders what could have been, if they'd been different people.)_

_(Nothing, he thinks. It’s only this, forever. What else could there ever be?)_

_...._

The next time Erica visits his grave, there’s already someone there.

Scott doesn’t look much better than he did the last time she saw him, only less bloody and bruised. But the pain on his face is still the same. She stops next to him and looks at the stone.

“They put his real name on it.”, she says, unsure of what else there is to say. Scott next to her scoffs. “He would have hated it.” His voice cracks halfway through the sentence. It sounds like he hasn’t used it in a long time.

Erica only sighs and doesn’t deny it. He really would have. It’s a monstrosity of a name she couldn’t even begin to pronounce, and she understands why he never told her what it was. It doesn’t stop her from wondering what it would have sounded like from his lips. She looks over to Scott, who seems to be lost in thought. She grabs his arm and his head snaps around to her so fast, he might have broken his neck if he wasn’t a werewolf. She says (because she has to, sooner or later),

“I don’t get why he called you.” He looks like he hasn’t been expecting her to say that at all. He should have been.

“You, _of all people_. He could have called me, or Derek, or his dad, or even the goddamn _ambulance_ , but he called you instead. Even after you rejected his calls again and again, he still only called you.” They look into each other’s eyes, and she knows he can see how desperate she is for an answer, for an explanation. She can’t bring herself to care right now. “ _Why?”_

Scott closes his eyes and sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. He lets out a little whine, barely audible even with her own enhanced hearing.

“I don’t know.” He says it quietly, like he’s telling a secret no one can know. (Perhaps he is.) “I thought about it so many times. I haven’t got the slightest idea.” Erica lets go of his arm and moves to turn away from him, when his voice sounds again.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?” He sounds almost disappointed, and it makes Erica feel a little sick. “It’s not what he would have wanted.”, she says.

“Besides,” She looks at him for a split second, before turning away completely. “I almost think this is punishment enough.”

She leaves him there, and doesn’t turn back once.

(There’s nothing here for her anymore.)

 ....

_She finds him crying in his room, a week or so after the whole incident with Gerard Argent. He’s heaving in great, shuddering sobs and the whole room smells of sadness and misery. There’s only one heartbeat to be heard in the house, so the Sheriff isn’t home at the moment. He looks up at her when she climbs through the window, and quickly wipes his eyes._

_They aren’t pack quite yet, and definitely not friends, but Erica doesn’t hesitate to go over and wrap him into a gentle hug. She knows that he would do the same thing for her, it’s just who he is. He doesn’t push her away, but he doesn’t say anything either, so they just sit there quietly until his sobbing subsides. It’s only then that she asks him what’s wrong. At first he only shakes his head and tries to play it down, but she doesn’t give up so easily._

_He tells her, then. Everything. Once he’s started he can’t seem to make himself stop (not that she wants him to). He tells her about his dad, who’s still so angry at him for withholding the truth and doesn’t even talk to him anymore, and about Scott, who hasn’t once checked up on him since that night of the game. It appears that he’s more concerned about his wayward girlfriend than about his hurting best friend._

_The worst thing is that Stiles doesn’t even seem to be surprised by that fact, just sad. Like he’s gotten used to it a while ago. It makes Erica unreasonably angry, that he’s being dismissed so easily by his friend and his father. He doesn’t deserve it, not after everything he’s done for all of them._

_When she tells him that, he only scoffs, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. It makes her even more angry. Not at him, of course, but at Scott McCall. That idiot wouldn’t know a good thing if it danced around under his nose. A few months ago Erica would have given about anything to have a friend like Stiles. (She still would, if she’s honest with herself.)_

_She thought she’d lost every chance she had to befriend him with the way she treated him since Derek bit her, but when he sighs and leans his head against her shoulder she thinks that, just maybe, it’s not too late to make amends. They would be good for each other, she thinks._

_(She stays with him for the first time that night. And for the first time in a while, they both sleep dreamlessly.)_

_...._

Erica doesn’t sleep a lot these days. (None of them do, really.) And if she does, her dreams are plagued by nightmares, and there’s nowhere to go when she wakes up screaming. She could probably go to Isaac and Boyd for comfort, but it’s not what she needs. She doesn’t need empty reassurances and false promises. What she _needs_ is Stiles’ silent understanding and his warm, restless body next to her. She needs their arms around each other and his quiet, even breathing sounding through the darkness around them.

One night the longing is so strong that she can’t help herself but to go to his house, even though both her and her wolf know he won’t be there.

She’s surprised when she sees Derek under Stiles’ bedroom window when she arrives. He’s sitting there with his knees pulled up to his chest, arms around them, his eyes closed. He didn’t open them when he heard her approach, and she doesn’t know if it’s because he knew it was only her or because he simply doesn’t care anymore if he gets attacked.

She hesitates, only for a few seconds, before walking over, stopping next to Derek and reaching her hand out. He looks up at her slowly, and the lost look in his eyes strengthens her resolve. She wiggles her hand a little and looks at him expectantly, waiting for him to take it. After a few seconds he does, slowly and hesitantly, and lets her pull him up.

“Come on,” she says quietly and points up to Stiles’ window, which, for some reason, is still open, like it always used to be when he was still alive. It’s comforting in a way, almost as if there’s still some part of him around to keep it open for her in case she needs comfort. His room has always been her hideaway. She thinks it’s only fair to share that with Derek, after everything they’ve both lost.

Derek looks like he wants to protest, but when he looks into her eyes, it appears he sees something that makes him pause. And when she climbs up, he follows. Once they’re inside, Erica doesn’t even look around before dragging him over to the bed and pulling him down onto it with her. She closes her eyes and inhales. It still smells like the both of them, like _stilesanderica_ and everything she remembers. When she opens her eyes, Derek is looking at her through the darkness, with something like a question behind his hazel eyes.

“I used to sleep here a lot,” she tells him. “Every time I had a nightmare, I would come here, and Stiles would already be waiting for me, almost as if he knew I was coming. He would hold out his arms and pull me down next to him, and never ask me to tell him what’s wrong, because he _knew_ , and we would sleep like that. I never had a single nightmare while sleeping here.” She takes in a shuddering breath. “After he died, I didn’t want to sleep. I thought ‘what if I have a nightmare?’. There would have been nowhere left to go.”

Derek’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before. Then, after a few moments have passed he asks, “So why did you come here tonight?” His voice is a terrible thing, raw and broken and unused for too long. She thinks those might as well have been the first words he said since they found the body in woods. 

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I think I just needed to be here. I wanted to smell him again.” Then, for the first time since she smelled his blood through the cold morning air, she smiles. “I’m glad I did, though. It feels a bit like coming home, after being away for a very long time. I think you, of all people, understand that.”

Derek’s frozen for a few moments, before he closes his eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. Then Erica feels his whole body relax beside her, and an almost reverent look sliding onto his face. He opens his eyes again, and there are tears in them, and she knows he _understands_.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he breathes, barely audible, and this time, when she reaches out to him, he doesn’t hesitate to take her hand.

That’s how the Sheriff finds them in the morning, wrapped around each other in his son's bed, sleeping soundly.

He stares at them for a while, before closing his eyes for a moment and nodding like an unasked question has been answered. Then, when he opens them again, he smiles, slowly and carefully and barely at all, like he’s forgotten how to and is trying to relearn.

“Why don’t you two come down for breakfast,” he says, not even bothering to wait for an answer.

When he leaves, the door stays open for them to follow.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this took me way too long to write, but whatever. Thanks for reading, and I hope it wasn't too bad. ;)


End file.
